Kevin Roose's Blog, page 6

Book trailers: They’re like trailers, but for books.

At long last, the book trailer for THE UNLIKELY DISCIPLE is finished!  Produced by my friend Davis Jung (an amazing filmmaker at Brown), the 4-minute clip is a brief look at the themes of the book, complete with never-before-seen footage of my time in the Thomas Road Baptist Church choir.

The book comes out in less than two weeks, so keep checking back for exclusive blog content.  I’ll be rolling out some “Jerry’s Kids” interviews with Liberty students, some deleted scenes, and (because I’m servi

New package, same food.

One more note from my Liberty trip.  Since I was last on campus, the Rot — Liberty’s notorious dining hall — has gotten a huge facelift.  New seating arrangements, revamped lighting, upgraded food stations.  With my Blackberry, I snapped a photo of the rafters, which have been painted with food-related Bible verses.

Unfortunately, the Rot’s food doesn’t seem to have gotten an an upgrade along with its decor.  The vegetable medley was grainy and tasteless, and my rib sandwich still tasted like a l

“You look like a Liberty student.” PLUS: Get an advance copy of TUD!

I just got back from three days at Liberty, where I met with the school’s administration about the book, spent time with old Liberty friends (who have all known about the book for a while), and met a few new friends.  Highlights of the trip, in no particular order:

– Eating Cheesy Westerns (cheeseburgers with fried eggs on top — a Lynchburg classic) with a few guys from my old dorm at the Texas Inn and having a hysterical conversation about Christian colleges and their rules.  As it turns out, th

Meet Jerry’s Kids: Steve Buchanan

This is the first installment of a new weekly series on this blog, called “Meet Jerry’s Kids.”  Every Monday or so, I’ll be posting an interview with a different Liberty student about their experiences at Bible Boot Camp.  (”Jerry’s Kids,” which you may know as an advocacy group for muscular dystrophy , doubles as the name of a popular Facebook tribute group to Jerry Falwell, Liberty’s late founder.) Some of these students I knew while I was at Liberty, some I didn’t.  Some are pious pastors-in-t

Can’t we all just get along? (Plus: TUD media update)

For a couple years now, I’ve been on Jerry Falwell’s “Falwell Confidential” listserv, which was taken over by his son Jonathan after his death.  Jerry’s weekly missives were typically devoted to attacking the left, and were decidedly aggressive in tone, but Jonathan (who has a Twitter!) seems to be using the listserv to promote a softer, gentler version of conservative evangelicalism.  In last week’s Falwell Confidential, called “The Lost Art of Civility,” the younger Falwell sang the praises of

My question is, why are the male and female symbols touching?

Cross-posted from The Huffington Post:

Celebrating Valentine’s Day at Jerry Falwell’s College

At most American colleges, young lovers are spending Valentine’s Day doling out Whitman’s samplers, stuffed animals, and long-stemmed roses to their crushes and significant others, hoping to get lucky in the process. Not so at Liberty University, the late Reverend Jerry Falwell’s “Bible Boot Camp” for young evangelicals.

As I found out when I spent a semester undercover at Liberty for my book The Unlikely

Mid-Week Potpourri

It’s been a busy week, so I haven’t had time to sit down and write the fuller posts currently kicking around in my head, but I wanted to throw out a few quick nuggets of note:

First, my editor, Ben Greenberg, got profiled in Publisher’s Weekly for their “50 Under 40″ series a few weeks back.  PW is the publishing industry’s main trade publication, and being singled out as an up-and-coming talent is a big deal.  Ben, who has been working with me on this book for more than two years, is a great edi

TUD in Marie Claire!

The new issue of Marie Claire hits stands this week, with a feature about THE UNLIKELY DISCIPLE in the Love/Sex section (near the back).  The Q&A, called “Holy Sex: Dating the Evangelical Way,” is about the dating climate I entered at Liberty, and how I struggled to reconcile the teachings of my second-wave feminist mom with Liberty’s rules against romantic contact and its staunch Baptist traditionalism.

The book isn’t officially out for six-ish weeks, so it’s a little early for buzz-building pub